Apple’s Minimalist Ive Assumes Jobs’s Role for Design

(L-R) Apple CEO Tim Cook, Apple senior vice president of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters look on as an attendee looks at the new iPhone 5 during an Apple special event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on September 12, 2012 in San Francisco. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- As Jony Ive worked on early iPhone
designs before and since its 2007 introduction, he regularly
held meetings in his design studio to get input from top Apple
Inc. executives -- except one: Scott Forstall.

Even as Forstall oversaw the group responsible for the
software that would run the iPhone, he didn’t participate in the
meetings, according to people with knowledge of the matter who
requested anonymity because the meetings were private. Ive and
Forstall were rarely in the same room, the people said.

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook made a choice between the
two men this week, forcing out Forstall and leaving Ive in
charge of the look and function of the software running
everything from the iPod Touch to the top-of-the-line Mac. Ive
will now be free to impart his minimalist aesthetic on familiar
services such as the iPhone operating system while making
commands more compatible from one product to the next. He will
probably move away from using icons that look like real-world
products, such as Post-It Notes and leather-bound contact books.

Still, with a background mainly in hardware, Ive could also
struggle to adapt to the demands of managing software
interfaces, which are typically revamped once a year and undergo
many smaller changes in between, said former colleagues such as
Brett Halle.

“This makes a lot of sense, in terms of getting
consistency of the user experience,” said Halle, a 21-year
Apple veteran who worked on operating systems before his
departure in March. “I’m concerned only as to whether he has
enough experience to understand the complexity of the software
side of this.”

Human Interface

Clashes between Forstall and other senior managers since
Jobs’s death a year ago had made it harder for teams to work
together, threatening Apple’s ability to keep producing the
kinds of electronics that made it the most valuable company.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was able to keep the
executives’ long-simmering tension under control. Cook made the
final decision to revamp management after Forstall refused to
sign a public apology for the mishandling of mapping software,
people with knowledge of the matter said.

Forstall and Ive didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ive, 45, takes on the role Jobs held of setting Apple’s
design vision, with responsibility for a group within Apple
called Human Interface, which had been run by Forstall before he
was pushed out. Ive shares the attention to detail and
perfectionistic zeal that characterized both Jobs and Forstall.

‘Collaborative Process’

Yet he contrasts with Forstall in key ways. Forstall was a
polished presenter who enjoyed the limelight at Apple keynotes.
Ive made rare appearances, preferring instead to appear in
videos about the making of the product of the day.

Forstall was also the most divisive member of Apple’s
executive team, people who worked with him told Bloomberg
Businessweek last year.

Supporters admire Forstall’s ability to manage massive
technical complexity while pushing his team to innovate. Critics
said he was overly concerned with empire building and pushing
through favored features while blocking other teams’ ideas.
British-born Ive is known for his deliberate, careful choice of
words, and for crediting members of his team while minimizing
his own role in development of products.

“Jonathan understands that design is a collaborative
process,” said William Parkhurst, a former designer at
Microsoft Corp. who has known Jobs and Forstall since they all
worked together at NeXT Computer Inc. “A design manager would
not try to exert his influence too much, because they know the
goodness that comes out of collaboration. You shouldn’t have an
idea at the beginning of what a product is supposed to be.”

Software Void

Effective as both executives are, Ive and Forstall didn’t
get along, said former Apple employees. Just as Forstall didn’t
go to Ive’s product-review meetings, neither did Ive attend
Forstall’s, one of these people said. While that hardware-software divide has long been the norm at Apple, Cook is trying
to create more collaboration with Ive’s promotion.

Forstall’s departure creates a void in Apple’s software
capabilities. He was an early advocate for creating the iOS
mobile software platform, and has overseen an engineering team
that is among the largest and most prolific at Apple, with an
annual release cycle that includes hundreds of new features.

Ive’s industrial design group works differently. With fewer
than 20 members, it works out of view of the rest of the company
in a design studio, perfecting hardware that is often updated
annually or less frequently.

Michael Jordan

“It’s really hard and a very good question is, ‘What does
this mean for Apple’s release schedule?,’” said Matt Drance, a
former Apple software evangelist. “You could argue both
directions: you could say they need to keep moving fast because
of the competition or you could say it needs to chill out and
focus on quality.”

The differences between the two teams may present
challenges for Ive as he tries to rally employees behind his
design vision. Following the news of Forstall’s departure, some
engineers are questioning Ive’s ability to lead software design,
according to a former senior Apple developer who has been in
touch with his colleagues.

This person compares the switch to Michael Jordan’s ill-fated move from professional basketball to minor-league
baseball. While both sports require good eyesight and athletic
ability, they entail starkly different skills.

Forstall had inspired intense loyalty among many of the
critical engineers who churn out the iOS iPhone and iPad
software upgrades each year. His staff was blindsided by the
firing, and even his assistant was caught by surprise, people
with knowledge of the matter said.

Night Coding

A big risk for Cook is that losing Forstall may quash the
tension that has helped drive Apple forward.

“If there’s no creative friction, you can become
middling,” Parkhurst said.

Forstall lost his biggest supporter when Jobs died last
year. After working for Jobs for his whole career, he was asked
by the then CEO in the first half of the last decade to lead the
secret development of the iPhone’s software. Jobs entrusted
Forstall with one of Apple’s most important projects because of
his technical acumen and ability to get things done.

In testimony during a patent trial between Apple and
Samsung Electronics Co. this year, Forstall smilingly recalled
long-night coding sessions and the smell of pizza that
characterized the “dorm” environment.

“In 2004, when we decided to build the iPhone, Steve knew
there were a lot of people that were going to have to be
involved, a lot of groups, so he put different people in charge
of each of the groups,” Forstall said in court testimony. “I
was put in charge of all the software.”

Internal Squabbles

In the months after Jobs’s death, turf wars began to break
out as executives jockeyed for control, according to people who
worked at Apple at the time.

Forstall’s team was particularly insular, and aggressive
about pursuing its own goals, said Halle, who ran the team that
built much of the common operating software inside Macs and the
mobile devices. He said that Forstall often was uninterested in
making improvements that would benefit other group’s products.

“Scott wasn’t supportive of melding” the Mac operating
system with the mobile operating system initially, Halle said.
“He just didn’t care.”

Cook’s reorganization leaves Ive in a position to put his
stamp on every aspect of what customers experience when they use
Apple products, from the shape and color of a device to the
fonts and on-screen layout of software buttons and icons.

HI Influence

Software design is increasingly crucial, said Thomas
Meyerhoffer, a former member of Apple’s industrial design team.

“The interface is becoming more and more important,” he
said. “You are interacting with your fingers, so what happens
on the software side makes the experience an excellent one -- or
just a good one.”

The Human Interface team has a studio in the same building
as industrial design, and it too is off limits to almost all
employees. The team’s influence outstrips its size of about 20.

Ive doesn’t have official control of all Apple’s software.
Eddy Cue was given charge of the Siri digital-voice assistant
and Apple’s mapping software, which has been beset by glitches.
Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering,
will now be responsible for building and maintaining both MacOS
and the iOS mobile software.

Still, the HI team makes the software layer that governs
how the products look and how customers actually use and
manipulate the various programs.

One of Ive’s biggest challenges will be helping
reinvigorate once groundbreaking user interfaces that some
reviewers and critics say have become mundane.

“There have been some signs of aspects of Apple’s UI
losing its way,” said Robert Brunner, a former head of Apple’s
design team who hired Ive in 1992. “Between Jony’s drive and
design sense, he can get things back in line.”